GOP lawmaker argues Marines on Kharg Island would not be ‘boots on the ground’

Should President Trump send U.S. forces to Iran’s Kharg Island, it wouldn’t count as “boots on the ground” in the country, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) argued Tuesday.

Trump is mulling sending troops to secure the inland, which handles roughly 90 percent of Iran’s crude exports, following strikes that targeted military infrastructure but left its oil infrastructure intact. About 2,500 U.S. Marines are being deployed to the region amid the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. 

“These 2,500 Marines, the Marine Expeditionary Force, would be to probably secure the island,” Sessions said on CNN. “The island is not, in my opinion, boots on the ground in combat circumstances, it would be to secure the facility.”

Trump on Monday said that the U.S. has “literally destroyed” everything on Kharg Island except for its oil facilities but left the door open to later target them. 

“As you know, we attacked Kharg Island and knocked it, knocked it, literally destroyed everything on the island, except for the area where the oil is, I call it the pipes,” Trump said at a meeting of the Kennedy Center board at the White House.

“We left the pipes. We didn’t want to do that but that – we will do that, we can do that on five minutes notice,” Trump said, adding that “I guess we did the right thing, but it may not stay that way.”

Trump also is looking to force Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which Tehran has effectively shut down since the start of the war more than two weeks ago, triggering a global energy supply crisis.

Any American forces on Iranian territory, however, would mark a major escalation in the war.

Sessions said he was against moving forces into Iran’s population areas, but that it would be acceptable to secure Kharg Island’s oil facilities. 

“Is that boots on the ground? No, not like inside Iran where they’re in the cities, where we go through circumstances we’ve had in the past of large areas of population, combatants against us, and it is a mess,” he said.

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